Sunshield

by Emily B. Martin

  “Well, let’s hope the Sunshield Bandit isn’t up on her court hairstyles.” I pick up the walking cane. “Can you carry the box? I’m going to have a hard enough time getting down the stairs in one piece.”

  He hefts the crate of our supplies. “Don’t roll your feet like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “That way you arch your feet around—I’m surprised you haven’t broken an ankle.”

  “That’s the way I was taught to walk,” I say snippily. “It lets you walk quietly.”

  “Maybe in buckskin boots, but not wooden heels. Anyway, who are you trying to sneak up on? Try kick walking instead.” He demonstrates as he walks to the door, jutting out a foot before laying it down. “Kick walk, kick walk.” He heads through the door with the heavy crate, loud as a rockslide and perfectly balanced.

  I grumble about namby Moquoians and how they wouldn’t last an hour on a scout march, ignoring Colm hissing about bias and my mother laughing that I’ve never been on a scout march, before following him out the door, kicking my heels upward and laying them down straight.

  It does seem to lessen the likelihood of ankle-breaking.

  That only pisses me off more.

  The driver is waiting in front of her thoroughbrace coach, the luxe private kind afforded by wealthy business folk. There are several seats for armed guards along the driver’s bench and roof, but they’re all empty. The two horses up front stamp in their expensive leather braces. The horse I borrowed from Iano, a sleek palomino mare named Kuree—the Moquoian word for flax—is hitched alongside, gleaming in the first brush of dawn.

  “Is that for the lockbox?” the driver asks, nodding at the crate in Iano’s hands. “You know I won’t be responsible for the loss of anything you’re bringing along?”

  “We’re aware,” Iano says, handing her the crate. “You deposited the payment?”

  She nods. She’d demanded full payment up front, along with a written statement saying we’d pay for any damages to her coach and team—which were almost certain to occur traveling into the rough territory of a notorious bandit, unarmed and well-furnished.

  Suddenly, the reality of our plan hits harder. I swallow and finger my firefly pin—I considered leaving it behind, but it’s giving me courage, and I’ve hidden it under the knot of my cravat. Unless the Sunshield Bandit strips me of my clothes, she won’t find it.

  I don’t think she’ll strip me of my clothes.

  Iano wrestles the crate into the lockbox under the interior seat and tacks the fabric back down to hide the door. He steps back and turns to me, and suddenly it’s time.

  He’s grave. “Veran—thank you.”

  “Sure, anytime.”

  “No, I’m serious. This could change everything. And listen, I’ll make inquiries around here, all right? Maybe someone will have a lead on Tamsin. So if things don’t go as planned, don’t feel like you have to stay out there. Just come back, and we’ll figure something else out. All right?”

  I’m jittery, to the point where I want to make a joke to defuse the tension—Mama’s influence. What could possibly go wrong? But I can tell from his expression this won’t go over well.

  “I’ll be smart about it,” I assure him.

  “All right.” He puffs out his breath. He hands me a drawstring bag, heavy with coin. “Good luck.” He opens up a palm and holds it out to me, as if he’s offering something. This baffles me at first, before I realize he’s trying to mimic my folk’s gesture of thanks.

  “And you.” I mirror the motion. There’s a white smudge on my thumb from the drawstring bag.

  He steps back, and I clamber awkwardly into the coach, settling onto the velvet cushion. The driver climbs up into her box and clucks to her team. They amble forward, and the carriage swings on its leather bracings. Kuree breaks into a walk on her lead alongside us.

  I look back through the window at Iano, but he’s lost to the cloud of dust behind us. A needle of red sunlight pierces my eye—dawn is breaking across the rugged flats. I settle back against the cushion, my stomach rocking with the carriage, as we ride toward the sun.

  Tamsin

  I started my period this morning!

  Honestly, this relieves me. My body’s been in such pain and I’ve been actively ignoring so much trauma that I wouldn’t have been surprised if my womb simply resigned in protest. But I felt the first pangs of cramping a few days ago—a welcome, familiar pain amid the worse, squishy pain, and today’s the big day.

  Of course, I have no bandages and am bleeding all over my trousers, blanket, and reed mat. I sit for a moment upon waking up, simultaneously relieved at the revelation that my body hasn’t fully quit on me and fretting about the sticky mess things will be before long. I get to my feet and wobble to the cell door. I close my fist and pound on the wood, shouting through the barred window.

  After a few moments of this, I hear swearing down the hall. A lantern flares. Someone stumbles in the dim dawn light.

  “What the blazing sun is your problem?” Poia demands through the window. Her eyepatch is off, revealing the milky white of her blind eye. “I swear by the colors if you don’t shut up . . .”

  Her words die away as she sees my state. My lips twitch at her renewed swearing, and she marches away, taking the lantern with her. She comes back a moment later with a bucket—a new bucket, hello bucket!—filled with cold water, and a rag. She hands me a length of bandages and a clean—cleanish, anyway—set of clothes.

  Now would be a good time to sling my waste bucket at her face and run for the open door. But I’m unsure how fast I could move, and I have no idea where I am except not Moquoia, and I imagine I now smell like a sweat-salted steak, grilled bloody rare. I’d be tracked by every predator on the continent. I focus instead on stripping off my clothes while she kneels down and begins scrubbing my mat, cursing. I resist the urge to laugh. Not my fault she didn’t give due thought to my menses.

  I arrange my new wardrobe—the same as the first, a colorless, shapeless shirt over similar trousers, belted with a bit of twine—and arrange the bandages in my underthings. Poia dunks her rag back in the bucket and wrings it out. She glances up at me and, seeing I’m dressed, suddenly remembers there’s a door to the outside world. She checks over her shoulder.

  And sees my handiwork on the wood.

  HIRES.

  I’ve been carving it a little deeper every day. It’s quite distinct, thrown into sharp relief by the angle of the dawn light coming in through the tiny window.

  “Damn,” I go to say, but it doesn’t come out right.

  Poia rises on her knees and gets to her feet. I don’t have time to duck. With the force of two carriages colliding, she wallops the side of my mouth with the back of her hand. The pain is astounding, bursting into blooms of color behind my eyelids. I drop like a blown-down tree, clutching my exploding head in my arms. She’s shouting down at me, but I can’t make out her words. I feel a cold shock of water—she empties the wash bucket on me before dropping it next to my head. The water has that faint tang of copper, or maybe it’s the blood washing my mouth. Can’t tell. Probably it’s both.

  I hear the cell door slam and the lock turn. I press my elbows against my head, as if physically containing the pain will make it better. Nausea turns my stomach. Great Light, don’t vomit, not now, not in this state . . .

  I lay curled on the wet dirt floor. After an agonizingly long time, the pounding pain begins to subside, slowly, stubbornly. The colors pulsing behind my eyes fade in intensity, flaming with each heartbeat. The nausea ebbs away. I let out a slow breath.

  Carefully, tenderly, I shift my jaw a bit. Right, that hurts a lot, stop it. I loosen my grip on my head. I’m wet now, and so is my mat, and my blanket. I smell like blood. My uterus contracts in a cramp. I lie in the wet dirt. Damn everyone and everything.

  At least now I have two buckets.

  Lark

  I poke morosely at the fire, banking a few of the coals to make them last longer. I
sent Saiph and Andras down to the river a few hours ago with the ox to haul up some wood, and I’m actively trying not to wonder where they’ve gotten to. Sedge is cleaning a rat from one of the snares, as close to Rose’s mat as he can work without sullying things with blood and guts. Lila is making a valiant attempt to piece together a few fraying burlap scraps into something big enough to be useful. Moll is napping on her blanket. I had Whit untangling knots from our length of twine, but she’s fallen asleep too, her breath wheezing through her cleft lip. She’s been sleeping a lot lately, her face pale and thin, her eyes red-rimmed and hooded. Absently I reach out and brush her black hair. It’s lanky and dull, falling through my fingers like dry grass.

  Rocks clatter from down the canyon. Rat lifts his head but doesn’t growl—sure enough, through the sage comes Saiph, puffing from his fast pace.

  “Lark,” he says.

  “What?” I ask. “Where’s Andras?”

  “He’s coming with the ox. But there’s something you might want to see, out across the river.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a coach,” he says, fidgeting with his usual twitchy energy.

  I sit back, tired. “I’m not going after a coach.”

  “It’s not a stage,” he says. “It’s small, just two horses on the team, plus one tethered along the side, all tacked up fancy as a new copper.”

  “I’m not going after a coach,” I repeat. “Who’s going to help me turn it over?”

  “Me and Sedge can,” he says. “There are no guards.”

  I pause. “None at all?”

  He shakes his head. “Just a driver.”

  “I have a hard time believing they’re toting a spare horse with no guards,” I say flatly. “Did you get a look inside?”

  “I watched it for a while. I think there’s just one passenger. They’d drive a little, and then stop, and he’d get out and look around. Then he’d get back in and they’d go a little farther.”

  “What’s he looking for?” I ask.

  “I dunno. A ford, maybe?”

  “It sounds like they’re prospecting,” Sedge says. “Looking for mining sites. Maybe they’re following that vein of ore along the river.”

  “Why the spare horse?” I ask.

  “Probably to go up the side canyons,” Lila says, her stitching in her lap. “So the passenger can ride into the places the coach can’t go.”

  Something squeezes in my gut. A new mine means new hands. More wagons. It means new skin tattooed with a double circle. The scarred skin itches under my sleeve. I look back at Rose. Up the path comes the slow scrabble of the ox’s hooves on the rocks.

  “You’re sure there are no guards?” I press Saiph. “Is the driver armed?”

  “If they are, it’s nothing special,” he says excitedly. “Maybe a crossbow, but they’ll have a time aiming it while driving, won’t they?”

  “What about the passenger?”

  Saiph is practically bouncing, simmering with an energy that’s more raw than before Pickle died. “I didn’t see anything on him—and you should see how he’s dressed. Head to toe in silk, pink like a berry, with tails and everything.”

  “Moquoian?”

  “Dressed like one, though he looks awfully dark for one—almost as dark as you.”

  There’s a range of skin color among Moquoians, so that’s not a good indicator, but nobles of any nationality are few and far between out here. It sounds odd for a prospector to be so finely dressed, but Sedge is right—I can’t think of another reason why a wealthy traveler would be ambling along this particular stretch of river, rather than racing to get to Snaketown. Either this passenger has been living with his head in the sand, or he’s lost.

  Maybe we can point him in the right direction.

  Andras comes up the path, tugging on the ox’s lead. Its broad back is loaded with firewood.

  He looks between Saiph and me excitedly. “Well? Are you going after it? They’re heading closer, and there’s still some time before the sun disappears.”

  I glance at Rose again, and then at Sedge.

  We’re down a horse, it’s true, and the mule is still lame. A strong new horse, with tack and all, could mean a faster route to Pasul.

  It could mean getting Rose to a healer. Could mean getting the ox to market for money to get Andras to Cyprien.

  “How far?” I ask.

  “Maybe a mile west, though we’ll have to hurry if we want to ford upstream of them,” Saiph says.

  Not far at all. We could be back before it’s truly dark.

  “You can leave us,” Lila says. “We’ll be fine.”

  I puff out a breath, but if the coach is really as close as Saiph says, I don’t even have to leave Three Lines alone for an hour.

  “We’ll at least go take a look. If it seems like something we can do between the three of us, maybe we’ll give it a shot. But I’m not taking any risks, all right?” I squint at Saiph, trying to make him calm down. “If it looks too chancy, we’re turning around.”

  “I can help,” Andras says, mirroring Saiph’s excitement. “I can ride behind Sedge—”

  “No,” I say, fighting another vision of Pickle’s broken angles. “You stay here. Unpack the firewood. Help Lila mix something up to eat.”

  He looks put out, but he doesn’t argue. I blow out the last of my breath and look again at Saiph. “Why don’t you get Pickle’s staff?”

  Saiph gives more of a whoop than a reply. He scrambles toward the cache.

  I drag a hand over my face and look at Sedge. “You can take the driver?”

  He nods. “Let me refill on quarrels.”

  “All right. Saiph, you’ll be responsible for cutting the horse loose.” I sigh and beat the dust off my hat. “I’ll take the carriage.” I settle my hat on my head and pull my bandanna up. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Veran

  I squint out over the sage flats, the Ferinno sun beating down so hard I can practically hear it sear my skin. Behind me, the horse team mouths their bits, snorting to moisten their nostrils.

  “It’s getting late,” the driver calls behind me. “At this point it’s going to be smarter to head for Snaketown for the night.”

  “We’ll compensate you the extra night,” I say, shading my eyes. I’m growing anxious—I’m certain we’ve been traveling slowly enough to be seen, but what if nobody’s watching? What if the Sunshield Bandit isn’t out today? What if she’s robbing somebody down on the stage road? What if she’s napping in her secret hideaway?

  What if this was all just wasted effort?

  “Get back in,” the driver says suddenly. “There’s dust up ahead.”

  “Where?” I swing to face up the road, wincing at the glare of the sun off the river. The bank is choked with cottonwoods and brush willow, but a patch is obscured by a swirling cloud of dirt.

  The driver swears. “There’s one behind us, too.” She snaps her reins to perk up the team. “Get in the coach!”

  I hop back up on the running board, but I don’t climb inside just yet. I hold on to the frame and peer behind us, into the sun. The air is suddenly alive with the pounding of hoofbeats.

  Damn, that happened fast.

  The stagecoach lurches, the carriage swinging on its suspension. The driver slaps her reins on the team’s rumps.

  “Remember our agreement!” I holler over the squeaking and clattering of the coach.

  The driver swears, the precise wording lost to the noise. “I refuse to take a quarrel for your stupid plan!” But she holds the team at a steady trot, not an all-out gallop, the wheels jostling off the rough road.

  We hit a rut, and I almost lose my grip. Reluctantly, I swing back inside and latch the door. I pull back the curtain, but the dust obscures most of the activity outside. There’s snarling now, like some wild animal, and one of the horses whinnies in response. The carriage weaves—I’m thrown against the door, knocking my forehead on the casing. Now there’s shouting, though I can’t mak
e it out. Before I can fully push myself upright, the coach slows. The driver’s commands to the horses are clipped, as if she’s giving them through clenched teeth.

  “Standing down!” she shouts. “Standing down.”

  The jolting slows and then stops, the coach rocking on its straps. I rub the tender spot on my forehead. The driver is exchanging terse words with someone else, their voice too low for me to hear. Is it the Sunshield Bandit? Hurriedly I scramble upright, my heart pounding in anticipation. But before I can move toward the door, there’s a singular crunch of bootheels on sand, and then the carriage rocks. The door swings open of its own accord.

  The late-afternoon sun slices inside like an arrow shot, catching me expertly in the eyes. I reel back, shading my face. Through blurry tears, I can make out the dark, hazy shape of someone on the threshold. Slowly, with sinister purpose, she steps up into the stage.

  I drag in my breath and hold it.

  I don’t know what I imagined.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t come close.

  Her eyes are the only things fully visible, and they flick over me and the rest of the coach in a single sweep. The rest of her face is covered by a faded red bandanna and shaded by a broad-brimmed leather hat. She’s tall and lean, dressed in calf-high riding boots, brown trousers, a white shirt, and a blue vest. Everything is dusty and worn, but it only makes my heart rage faster. After weeks in the polished, perfumed court of Moquoia, she radiates a sense of purpose and intent. I realize I’ve shrunk back against the velvet seat cushion.

  She lets go of the doorframe, a shiny buckler on one wrist and a wicked-looking hunting knife in her other hand. With the calm, confident manner of someone who’s done this a hundred times before, she holds the blade against the apple of my throat. I swallow, and I can feel the tip graze my skin.

  She looks me up and down. Her cheeks are smeared with eyeblack, but around it she’s a riot of bronzes and coppers and sun-browned sepias. Her eyes are amber in the slanting sunlight, and her dark brown hair is locked in long ropes, pulled back into a thick tail under her hat.